472    THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC
Michael Schelle: The Score: Interviews with Film
Composers
Beverly Hills: Silman-James Press, 1999 [xviii, 427 p. ISBN: 1-879-50540-1. $19.95]
NICHOLAS REYLAND
C
omposers, when asked
about their life and work,
tell tales. They create
narratives concerning this event,
that stylistic trait, those bars of
this or that composition, and
they do so with varying degrees
of fealty to what they can recall
of the emotions, motivations
and thought-processes governing
their actions at the time. The
rest is invented in the service of
interests aesthetic, commercial,
and socio-political. Film composers
– unsurprisingly, perhaps, given
the narrative artworks that they
co-create for a living – are no
exception to this rule, a fact that
is amply demonstrated by the
important collection of interviews
Michael Schelle has conducted and
compiled in The Score: Interviews
with Film Composers (Beverly
Hills: Silman-James Press, 1999).
Schelle’s book consequently
invites the reader not only to
reflect at length on its wealth
of conversations and film music
readings, which are provided
by Schelle in consort with an
impressively diverse pantheon
of famous and less familiar
composers (John Barry, Elmer
Bernstein, Terence Blanchard,
Bruce Broughton, Paul Chihara,
John Corigliano, James Newton
Howard, Mark Isham, Daniel Licht,
Joel McNeely, Thomas Newman,
Marc Shaiman, Howard Shore,
Shirley Walker, and Christopher
Young), but also to consider the
meta-narratives interlinking
the tales told by the different
composers, in order to assess the
broader currents Schelle’s book
reveals with regard to the theory
and practice of recent Hollywood
film composition.
That composers lie, spin and
filter, as well as (often) recounting
events as honestly as they can
given the ravages of life and long
lunches on the memory, is hardly
news, as anyone acquainted
with, say, the Stravinsky-Craft
“conversations” will know. Nor
is the need for scholars to adopt
an appropriately sceptical critical
stance when evaluating what
composers say and, indeed, what
their interviewers lead or permit
them to say (and, in turn, what
is edited out of, or into, the
eventually published text by the
interviewer and other editorial
players). Concerns about the
need to read the products of the
interview process not as privileged
“facts” concerning individual
compositions or events, but rather
as texts requiring robust critical
analysis in their own right, are
discussed for instance by Charles
Wilson in a penetrating recent
examination of the “rhetoric of
autonomy” György Ligeti has
spun around his creative output
– a narrative as deftly woven
as the spiders’ webs he dreamt
of as a child, or his music’s
micropolyphonic textures (which
Ligeti, spinning his narrative,
memorably links to those delicate
arachnid threads). The “rhetoric of
autonomy,” Wilson argues,
has served an especially
important function for writers
and artists ever since the advent
of what Felicity Nussbaum has
called “the published self as
property in a market economy”
– the function, namely, of
differentiating them from other
creators and proclaiming the
uniqueness of their work in a
competitive market of symbolic
goods.
Are there, one might therefore
wonder, similarly motivated
“rhetorics” to be discerned from
the statements of film music
composers?
If so, one should not necessarily
expect a “rhetoric of autonomy” to
be produced by all film composers
in their public discourses. Theirs
is a substantially different
  See Charles Wilson, “György Ligeti and the
Rhetoric of Autonomy,” Twentieth-Century Music 1,
no. 1 (2004), 6. Wilson quotes Felicity Nussbaum, The
Autobiographical Subject (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989), xiv.

situation from the aesthetic and
commercial field of tensions facing
mid-twentieth- and twenty-first-
century concert music composers.
One familiar film music composer
narrative, however, is one of
self-justification and validation
– although, as discussed below,
this may no longer be quite so
widespread a phenomenon as it
was when Hollywood composers of
the 1930s and 1940s felt the need
regularly to justify their work by
equating it with more established
multimedia forms, and most
obviously the opera.
Schelle’s book reveals that the
rhetoric of film composer self-
validation still has legs. Shakier
legs than before, perhaps, not
least because it is increasingly
hard to think of Hollywood film
composers as being especially
benighted when their scores reach
hundreds of thousands more
listeners than a concert music
composer’s entire oeuvre will reach
during her lifetime. Then there are
the CD releases, with even minor
soundtracks shifting many more
units than contemporary concert
music CDs. But the issue, for the
time being, appears still to be
relevant, and Schelle nails his own
colours to the mast on page one
of his introduction, highlighting
both the aim of his project and
the manner in which, in his view,
“classical musicians and the
musically ‘educated’ public” have
tended to draw “an inappropriate
and unfair distinction between the
so-called ‘real’ composers and their
film music brethren”:
This distinction has led to the
erection of hastily cobbled walls
that are meant to separate the
misunderstood, unappreciated,
visionary, starve-for-your-art
“serious” composers from what
many ill-informed “music lovers”
perceive to be the “artistically-
limited prostitutes” who cater to
the public as they ply their trade
in Hollywood for the big bucks.
(p. xv)
No doubt some “educated”
listeners do make such a
distinction, although one might
feel wary about making such a
blanket claim (especially one which
uses so many unattributed quasi-
quotations / scare quotes). Existing
praise for Schelle’s book, however,
as evidenced on its cover blurb,
takes a similar line, as in Scott
Alexander and Larry Karaszewski’s
statement that, “For once, [film]
composers are truly appreciated:
They [sic] come across as smart,
funny, and quite opinionated.
This is a book which needed to be
written.”
To whom, then, will this book’s
attempts to combat misperceptions
most appeal? Historians and
biographers will certainly find
details in which to revel (Barry’s
discussion of his low boredom
threshold while saturating himself
in films at his family’s picture
house casts light, for instance,
on both his life and musical
development). Critical theorists
will also find a number of loose
threads to tug on. Gender is one
such strand, particularly as it might
apply in readings of Walker’s case,
the only woman interviewed here
and, as a “ghost writer,” literally a
phantom (i.e., uncredited) presence
in many films. Herein lies a meaty
case study-in-waiting on the
invisibility, at various intersecting
levels, of the female composer in
discourses surrounding Hollywood
film music as much as within the
system itself. (And if male film
composers feel benighted, what
about their female colleagues?)
Politics of a different stripe arise
in Bernstein’s interview, which
touches on his “left-wing causes”
and grey-listing, before moving
on to discuss (albeit without
REVIEWS   473
making an overt connection) his
subsequent scoring of some of the
wryest satires of the American
Dream ever produced (from Animal
House to Far from Heaven, although
the latter is too recent to be
discussed in Schelle’s book).
It is the analyst-critic of
film music, however, who will
potentially derive the most value
from this book. As Schelle explains
in his introduction,
the real insight into a composer’s
creative heart, mind, and soul
can only surface when we learn
why he or she wrote a retrograde
double-fugue exposition for the
bloody decapitation scene or
why spiral notation and serial
procedures were unleashed for
the white-tie-and-tails ballroom
sequence. (p. xvii)
Leaving aside the rhetoric
(the idea that one might
unproblematically “learn” a “real
insight,” phrases which are partly
a result of Schelle’s accessible but
occasionally overly chatty style),
this is an admirable strategy.
One of the great necessities in
film music analysis is, arguably,
the development of a theory
of filmic narrativity capable of
embracing the role of music within
film’s contrapuntal and dialogic
discourse. At times, Schelle’s
interviews do not quite live up to
this aim, zooming in on style and
technique rather than panning
back to consider why a musical idea
is woven into a film’s narrative.
His best questions, however, in
tandem with his non-combative
style, encourage his interviewees
to move beyond technique in their
comments, and when Schelle
steers them in the direction of
their music’s narrative function,
the tactic often yields fascinating
  This, at least, is my opinion; my own film
music research is focussed, in part, on developing
such a theory.
474    THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC
results. In doing so, the interviews
may even begin to suggest a site
within which a more judicious
appraisal of the value of a film
composer’s work might be made:
the success or failure, richness of
paucity, of her or his contribution
to the narrative texts that he or she
has helped to co-create.
Schelle therefore adopts
the strategy of the fan with a
plan in his interviews, and with
mixed results, as in the following
exchanges from his interview with
Howard:
[Schelle]: Your music for ER
is a classy tune for a quality
program.
[Howard]: Thanks. (p. 193)
. . . .
[Schelle]: Waterworld has a lot
of rhythmic 5 / 8s and 7 / 8s that
keep you on the edge, but I also
noticed a real attraction to those
classic Hollywood minor-third
progressions. The C-minor area
moves to E-flat minor to F#
minor, but [you] take your time,
stretch the modulations. It works
well because of its association
with endless stretches of water.
Was it your conscious choice
to use these classic, suspense-
building progressions that
allow you to take a long time
to get where you’re going?
[Howard]: Yeah, it was
conscious. I resisted those kinds
of chord progressions for years. I
really did. I would hear them in
horror movies and I would hear
them in Goldsmith and in John
Williams. I still hear them. But I
resisted and resisted. It became
self-deceiving in a way. I was in
a kind of denial about it, because
audiences, directors, producers
– everybody watching the movie
– has certain expectations. Even
though you aren’t necessarily
expecting a progression of
minor thirds, there is a sound
to that sequence which, when
tied to an image, particularly
when tied to a spectacular,
ultra-large image, is hard to
resist . . . It was just a matter of
consciously bringing those chord
progressions into my toolbox as
just another place to think and
another place to go. (p. 192-3)
Schelle’s ER comment is a sop to
Howard’s taste and talents. The
Waterworld question, however, in
adopting a position and providing
a detailed reading, requires more
from its answerer than merely
trotting out a familiar response.
Schelle is well-placed to do this.
Time and time again in his book,
one suspects that he knows the
films and scores better – and
accords them considerably more
value – than the composers, some
of whom seem slightly bemused, if
flattered, to be engaging in detailed
dissections of certain examples of
their work. And Schelle is using a
classic interviewing tactic here, not
quite good cop / bad cop, but one in
which well-placed daubs of praise
(as much to boost an interviewee’s
confidence as to ingratiate oneself
with them) can be used to create
an atmosphere within which more
detailed questions can be posed
and in which composers feel
relaxed enough to answer them in
depth. One must also remember
that film composers (and many
other kinds of composer) do not
necessarily reflect deeply on their
practice: they are often too busy
composing. Ample encouragement
is thus a necessity.
The arrangement of the
interviews is alphabetical, and one
wonders if Schelle was attracted
to this arrangement because,
while being ostensibly democratic,
it places his lengthy John Barry
interview first and his discussion
with Christopher Young last. Both
  I recognise this technique as I use it in my
own interviewing of (concert music) composers,
in which, in retrospect, the sops occasionally
make me wince, but not when they lead to greater
depths being reached elsewhere in the interview.
are clearly composers Schelle
admirers deeply, and one of the
most enjoyable moments in the
book comes when he tells Young
that the first thing his film music
students at Butler University
hear is a cue from The Vagrant.
Young’s response is winning:
“You are fucking kidding!”
(p. 394). But the arrangement,
as Schelle predicts but does not
pursue in his commentaries, also
permits several examples of what
he describes as “just good old
Jungian synchronicity” (p. xviii).
That synchronicity is certainly
in attendance, in the form of a
number of contrasting takes on
identical issues which pop out
between different, and sometime
adjacent, interviews.
The Barry interview sets up
the first of the themes that ripple
across the surface of the book:
the issue of the film composer
as sole auteur vs. compositional
collaboration. Most obviously, this
relates to the role of orchestrators.
Barry and Howard’s views may
be constructively contrasted here,
Barry reflecting an old-school
belief in the desirability of doing
it oneself, Howard the need to
be realistic in changing times,
albeit while also recognizing
the dip in musical value which
results when one is not working
quite so intimately with the
sonic realization of one’s musical
thoughts. The issue of co-creating
those musical thoughts also rises
in the case, for example, of the
sonorities with which Newman
(who refers to the ludicrous
ritual of the orchestral score) and
his collaborators Rick Cox and
Chas Smith tinker in the studio.
Newman and Co.’s cooperative
approach can be contrasted to
some more painful stories about
co-creation. In this regard,
Walker’s take on her work on Black
Beauty with Carmine Coppola and

on her “split” with Danny Elfman
(due, in part, to the persistent
rumours that she was creating
much of “his” music – a charge she
refutes here) makes for compelling
reading. As Shaiman points out,
however, one point where greater
collaborative proximity is surely
needed in current practice is during
the final sound mix of a movie,
in order to counter the narrative
obfuscations that can result when
SFX and dialogue editing do
not take into account a musical
perspective.
Barry also initiates a thread
on the merits of composing with
or against the action, discussing
how the sight of Sharon Stone’s
automatic weapon jutting out
of her stocking-top in a church-
set scene in The Specialist is
scored against “this big God
music” (p. 35), thereby shaping
a deliciously surreal moment
of sacred profanity. The issue
of composing in counterpoint
to / parallel with other aspects
of the filmic discourse – and
primarily the most obvious
emotional undertow of the action
being depicted in a particular scene
– has been debated since Eisenstein
and the earliest sound films. What
becomes clear here, however,
is the dangerous simplicity of
critical views in which more recent
“Hollywood” scoring practices
continue to be construed in terms
of parallelism (via discussions of
Mickey-Mousing, transparency, and
thus suturing and forced audience
assimilation into ideologically
motivated subject-positions), as
opposed to the more liberated
agendas of (non-Hollywood)
film-making teams which seek
to use music contrapuntally.
Certainly, the composers Schelle
interviews don’t appear to have
been reading up on the relevant
Grand Theorizing. Instead, a
wealth of approaches to the issue
of parallelism and counterpoint in
recent Hollywood practice emerges
from the book.
Several composers accept that
subjugating a scene’s music to the
articulation of a broad narrative
point via unabashed parallelism
is often an imperative. Even
Corigliano, who unsurprisingly
takes a relatively ambivalent
stance on such issues (as part
of his intersecting concert
music composer’s “rhetoric of
autonomy”), admits as much:
[Schelle]: The film score [for
Altered States] has a natural
dramatic flair, but knows when
to use traditional film-scoring
techniques in the tradition
of Max Steiner, Hans Salter,
Tiomkin, et al. – the door opens
to very low strings, the baboon
man jumps out to a big shock
chord, and so on.
[Corigliano]: Well, there are
times when you want to do
that, or just have to do that,
and times when you want
more of a fabric, a texture,
an atmosphere. (p. 168)
The risk of going against the grain
in such situations, moreover, is
articulated in Shore’s sardonic
discussion of the unceremonious
dumping of his edgy score for
Ron Howard’s Ransom (“All I can
figure out,” Shore suggests, “is that
[Howard] came into the picture
wearing a black leather jacket and
left wearing a white sports coat,”
p. 346). And as Newman points
out to Schelle, who at times seems
a little too keen to validate all
Mickey-Mousing as tongue-in-
cheek postmodernism committed
with a knowing smirk on the
composer’s face, “sometimes
I’m [not smiling, I’m] weeping”
(p. 280).
In this respect, one of the most
striking instances of synchronicity
in the book comes from the
REVIEWS   475
adjacent interviews of Newman
and Shaiman, both of whom
discuss their approaches to scoring
the build-up to a gunshot:
[Newman]: I remember when I
did Flesh and Bone, a movie about
little ideas becoming huge ideas,
there was a piece of temp music
in it just before a gunshot went
off. It climaxed with a crescendo
to a single gunshot – boom! So
I think, well, of course, you
gotta go boom! Sometimes we
get into these lethargic places
where we think, well, that’s just
how it’s gonna go down. But Bill
Bernstein said, “This just sucks.
It’s just too dramatic.” So in
this case, we decided to subdue
the crescendo, so everything
dissolves and you get this deadly
silence . . . and then . . . boom!,
the gun goes off.
[Schelle]: You went in a reverse
direction from the temp.
[Newman]: Totally. And it
was a great dramatic idea.
. . . .
[Schelle]: Your score for the
opening scene [of Ghosts of the
Mississippi] is layer upon layer
of transparent yet tense forward
motion to the gunshot climax.
[Shaiman]: I remember
watching the opening scene
on television and just being so
intimidated. How can I possibly
score this scene? Someone’s
getting murdered. How can
I not write trivial music for
such a powerful moment?
. . . The music comes right
back in after the guy is shot,
but, as you said, the whole
first section is just building
and building. It’s the tension
of the inevitable. (p. 310)
Not only, therefore, do a variety
of responses to such situations
exist in contemporary Hollywood
scoring practices (and was it
not ever thus?), but even those
476    THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC
responses which do seek to move
in parallel with the emotional
content of the action (Shaiman’s
“tension of the inevitable”),
as opposed to sculpting the
rhetoric of the filmic discourse
in an ostensibly more subtle and
contrapuntal manner (Newman),
may be made with admirable
degrees of artistic awareness. Both,
in turn, can carry the weight of
ideologies, with the nuances of the
practice having an impact on the
message being promoted.
Newman, in discussing
such nuances, emerges as a
particularly incisive and intelligent
commentator, not least when he
tries to explain the effects one
might seek to devise given music’s
usually (although not exclusively)
secondary function as a narrative
voice operating within a film’s
polyphonic discourse:
[Newman]: You can argue
that [film music] is heard and
listened to, but usually that’s
accidental or that’s because
it’s appropriate for a particular
dramatic moment in the movie,
as opposed to, “Well, gee, I
really wanna be heard.” Find the
moments when you can speak
out and the moments when it’s
inappropriate to speak out. I
don’t want to say, “Well, I’m
a composer and I want to be
heard” as much as “Here’s what
I can do in this environment.”
Some environments are more
avant-garde, more progressive,
than others. Some are very
conservative, and you kind of
have to do what you have to do.
(p. 269)
Yet film composers can add layers
of nuance and perspective to even
the most “conservative” of films.
Newman’s comments, and those
of many composers in Schelle’s
book, recognize that even when it
is “unheard,” in the sense of not
being the conscious focus of the
perceiver’s attentiveness at a given
point in the filmic experience,
music – like the inner voices of
a fugue – adds dimensionality to
filmic narrativity, affecting and
influencing one’s perceptions of
the more prominent outer voices
of that polyphony, and occasionally
cresting (like an alto voice rising
above the soprano) to steal the
limelight and lead the dialogic
dance.
Given the gradations which
emerge concerning parallelism vs.
counterpoint – an issue laden with
clichéd associations of sold-out
(Hollywood) commercialism vs.
(non-Hollywood) artistic integrity
– it is not surprising, therefore,
that the meta-narrative to emerge
from the book regarding the
validity of film music composition
is also more complicated than
one might expect (not least
given Schelle’s stated aims at the
outset of his book). At the risk of
substituting one over-simplification
for another, two positions
seem to emerge in place of the
previously more inclusive “rhetoric
of validation,” interestingly,
these positions, in turn, reflect
alternative takes on a connected
“rhetoric of autonomy.” Comparing
the stances of Corigliano, Newman
and Blanchard, for instance,
with Broughton, Howard and
Shaiman, one discovers composers
positioning themselves, to varying
degrees, as outsiders or insiders
in relation to the Hollywood
machine. The outsiders speak
of a desire not so much to go
against the grain of the action
and to compose contrapuntally
(“insider” Howard talks about this
as enthusiastically as anyone) but
to remain true to broader artistic
projects of which their film work
is but one component. Corigliano’s
“classical” voice, Blanchard’s
jazzer credentials, Newman’s
sonic experimentalism – all speak
to a desire both to create an
autonomous voice and to protect
that voice from being sullied
through compromise or ill-chosen
film collaborations. And yet, who
sounds happier? Surprisingly,
given the previous paradigm of
the “rhetoric of validation,” it is
the composers who have accepted,
and indeed embraced, the need
for compromise, in terms of both
autonomy of voice and fealty to a
personal artistic vision, who sound
happier about their work.
Corigliano, for example,
carefully positions his own film
scoring in parallel to Beethoven’s
composition of an opera (the simile
is, of course, telling regarding
Corigliano’s construction of his
own “rhetoric of autonomy”) as
a complement to, as opposed to
a replacement for, the composing
of concert works. Chihara,
on the other hand, mounts a
passionate defence of compromise
that is all the more fascinating
coming from a composer who
could easily have attained a
similar concert music status to
Corigliano. Instead, Chihara
eschewed the notionally highbrow
– “Oh, he’s gone Hollywood” (p.
133) Chihara’s former peers in
academia dismissively stated – as
demonstrated by his acceptance,
both as a novice film composer but
also, retrospectively, in aesthetic
terms, of director Paul Bartel’s
adaptation of the music Chihara
had spotted and composed for
Death Race 2000. As Chihara notes,
[Chihara]: Paul used my Bach
fugue over all of the final chase,
the climactic chase of the movie.
I didn’t intend that – I don’t
know what I wrote the fugue for,
but he stuck it over that chase
and it was brilliant. I wrote what
I thought was appropriate, but
Paul Bartel, in his lunatic genius
way, put the music wherever he
wanted to. I learned so much
from that – it was like a great
seminar on film composing.

. . . I would always put fast
music on chase scenes, love
music on love scenes, and so
forth. What did I know? I just
gave Paul so many fast cues
and so many soft cues, and he
assembled them like so many
Lincoln Logs. (pp. 134-5)
Appearing next to Corigliano’s
interview (another pleasingly
jarring synchronicity), Chihara
offers a tangy rejoinder to the
potentially discriminatory subtext
of the rhetorics of autonomy and
self-validation woven by some
film composers, by reflecting
an apparently equally prevalent
rhetoric of collaboration and
accommodation. To be skeptical,
one might wonder if some of
these conciliatory statements,
particularly from Schelle’s younger
interviewees, relate partly to
a desire not to bite the hand
that feeds them. But this, too,
speaks ultimately to a richness of
approaches and contexts within
contemporary Hollywood scoring
practice.
A few typos here and there
disrupt one’s engagement with the
book’s otherwise clearly presented
interviews (bold type is used
for Schelle’s questions, normal
weighting for the answers; spacing
and margins are ample, structural
signposting clear). These appear
to be errors of copy-editing (the
strange symbols, for example,
which creep into Blanchard’s
discussion of tape sizes on p. 68;
“interesting” where “interested”
should have appeared in the final
paragraph of Schelle’s preface, p.
x). But this does not greatly detract
from what is overall a generous
and stimulating book – generous in
the sense that analysts, theorists,
historians and enthusiasts alike
will find much to inform and
entertain them within its pages,
stimulating because the detailed
discussions of individual scores
send one zipping off to the video
store (or cueing up yet more
movies online with one’s home
delivery service); composers, too,
will find ideas to stimulate their
own reflections on composing for
the screen, alongside opportunities
to revel in the book’s more gossipy
asides and their colleagues’
occasional lapses into hubris.
So be warned: if you have yet to
experience Crooklyn, Altered States
or Death Race 2000, this book
could prompt immediate, time-
consuming action.
And there are many more
prompts to such action here: Barry
on scoring around the timbre,
cadence and register of Gregory
Peck’s voice; Bernstein on scoring
with, but exaggeratedly and thus
at an angle to, comedic narratives;
Blanchard on organizing a score;
Broughton on performance practice
in relation to the vertiginous
technical challenges in Honey, I
Blew Up the Kid; the interplay of
Chihara and Bartel to create the
sophisticated narrational voice
of the music in Death Race 2000;
Corigliano’s organicist approach
to unifying The Red Shoes through
seven source chords; Howard (yes,
James Newton Howard) on Elliott
Carter; Newman on how to record
a door, and on being caught in
several minds over scoring the
hanging scene in The Shawshank
Redemption; the serendipity of
Shore’s seemingly all-important
choice of organ sound in
Videodrome, and the composer’s
discussion of the Hindemith-
influenced preponderance of
seconds, fourths, fifths, sevenths
and ninths in his harmonies (and
how important is that sound to
shaping wider perceptions of
David Cronenberg’s œuvre?); and
Young’s unstinting honesty about
how damn hard it continues to
REVIEWS   477
be merely to get the work done in
time as a film music composer.
The book also reveals itself,
therefore, as a potential goldmine
for teachers of film music, thanks
in part to the composer comments,
but also to Schelle’s often more
illuminating readings of scores and
cues. One would not wish for such
comments and commentaries to
be accepted unquestioningly. On
the contrary, Schelle’s book could
provide a sourcebook for modules
in which critical engagement and
analysis of the statements made
and the scores discussed becomes
a site for a dialectical critique, thus
opening up aesthetic, economic
and socio-political issues including,
but no doubt ranging beyond,
those mentioned in this review.
Consequently, whether or not one
agrees with Schelle’s readings
(and the composers don’t always,
especially when Schelle rescues
their “mistakes” with glowing
interpretations of a cue’s narrative
contribution – see, for instance,
his discussion with Howard of
a segment of Falling Down, pp.
186-7), one must admire Schelle’s
ability to present reasonably
detailed analytical sketches to all of
his interviewees. The hard work of
analyzing, in musical and narrative
detail, a large body of films has
paid off in Schelle’s book, which
leads one to consider a range of
issues and to appraise a diversity of
films. One finishes the interviews
full of questions and a desire to
think about and experience the
texts concerned – the best outcome
that tales told about music can ever
hope to achieve.